His thumb traced the line. Slow. From the cheekbone down. Not checking for damage. Not assessing. His hand on my face was the quietest thing in the tent, and it was saying something that didn't need words.

"I hate that I'm on the wrong side of this," he said.

"Then pick a side."

The words came out before I could filter them. Raw. The kind of thing you say when someone is touching the scar that represents the worst night of your life and you're too tired and too hurt and too honest to play the game anymore.

His thumb stopped at the edge of my jaw.

Footsteps.

His hand dropped. I straightened. Two seconds of distance re-established between the cot and the chair, and by the time Torren came through the tent flap, we were two wounded wolves on adjacent cots with nothing between us but gauze and silence.

Torren looked at Kieran. At me. At the two feet of space that was trying very hard to look like it had always been two feet and not less.

His face went flat. Not anger — Torren didn't do anger in front of outsiders. Something harder. The expression of a man who has spent six years keeping someone alive and has just watched her move toward the one thing he can't protect her from.

"Isla has the dressings," he said. Voice neutral. Eyes not.

Isla came in behind him. Changed Kieran's shoulder dressing with the professional detachment of a healer who had opinions about this situation and was keeping all of them inside. The wound was deep — three punctures where the wild rogue's teeth had found purchase through the muscle. She cleaned, stitched, and re-wrapped in four minutes without speaking.

Kieran left through the side flap. The same way he'd come. No escort. No explanation.

Torren waited until the tent was empty. Until Isla had taken her last patient to the recovery area and the canvas divider had been pulled back and there was nothing in the medical tent except two people and the conversation that was about to happen.

"You didn't pull back," he said.

"Torren."

"He touched your face and you didn't pull back."

"He was checking—"

"He wasn't checking anything." His voice was steady. Torren's voice was always steady. Even when what he was saying could cut. "I've been watching you since the army arrived. I watched you lie to me about the midnight run. I watched you come back from that forest with something you weren't saying. I've been patient. But what I saw in the tree line tonight and what I just saw in this tent—"

"What did you see?"

"You know what I saw."

Silence. The tent canvas moved in a draft. Outside, someone was hammering a wall panel back into place. The steady rhythm of repair.

"The last Alpha you trusted gave you that scar," Torren said. Quiet. Precise. The words placed like stitches. "He convinced you he was safe. That he was on your side. And then he took your daughter and put silver on her skin."

"Kieran is not Declan."

"I didn't say he was. I'm saying you don't know what he is. And you're not in a position where not knowing is safe."

I looked at him. Six years of Torren. Six years of the man who'd walked into my half-built territory with nothing and stayed because he'd decided I was worth following. He wasn't jealous. He wasn't possessive. He was the person who'd carried Lily when my arms gave out and held the line when my lines broke, and he was standing here telling me something I didn't want to hear because nobody else would.

"Tell me you're not falling for the man who's supposed to destroy us," he said.

I should have said no. A clean, simple no. The kind that closes a door and lets everyone move on.

"I don't know what I'm doing," I said instead. "I don't know what this is."

He stood there for a long moment. His jaw worked once. Then he nodded. Not acceptance. Acknowledgment. The nod of a man who has received an honest answer and wishes it had been a different one.

He left the tent. I sat on the cot with my cracked rib and my stitched shoulder and the ghost of a thumb on my jaw, and I tried to remember the last time I'd told Torren the truth and had it feel this much like a mistake.